Security

IT professionals continue to cite security concerns as one of the largest barriers to cloud migration. Uniform government standards specific to cloud computing have yet to be finalized, leaving important questions regarding data availability and integrity unanswered. SafeGov.org aims to provoke discussion related to these concerns as well as raise awareness of the ways in which cloud computing could ultimately strengthen existing security measures.

“In September, we announced that all new Lollipop devices would be encrypted by default. Due to performance issues on some Android partner devices we are not yet at encryption by default on every new Lollipop device.
But that won’t counter the feeling of disappointment amongst pro-privacy types. “I’d hope mobile OS and handset vendors would all be moving as quickly as possible to default encryption – most users don’t realise how important this is, given the sensitivity of the data on their phones, and the ease with which they can be lost or stolen,” said Ian Brown, professor of information security and privacy at Oxford University.

The Constitution says that we have the right to be secure in our "persons, houses, papers and effects." We have the right to speak free from regulation by the government. There are some who say that the Internet has rewritten the laws of supply and demand, or changed common decency and morality, or altered the possibility of being free from police surveillance. They are mistaken.

The bipartisan Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad (LEADS) Act of 2015, introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives, offers essential reforms that rectify outdated privacy laws. We commend the sponsors – Reps. Tom Marino and Suzan DelBene – for introducing this critical legislation.
Today’s introduction builds on what is now bipartisan, bicameral momentum for this effort. Senators Orrin Hatch, Chris Coons and Dean Heller introduced the Senate companion of LEADS earlier this month.

On a recent visit to Silicon Valley, France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve listed the reasons why he would like to see better U.S. cooperation in cases like the Charlie Hebdo attack.
Before citing those reasons, let’s briefly review how things are supposed to work. Most countries have what are called Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) that establish standard procedures for cooperation with the police and legal authorities of other countries.

Reps. Marino and DelBene spoke about their introduction of LEADS Act at an event hosted by ACT | The App Association on Friday, February 27.
The lunch briefing, “Privacy a Threat to Companies Abroad?” included a panel featuring ACT | The App Association, IBM, NAM, and Rackspace. The panelists discussed why passage of the LEADS Act is critical for the tech and manufacturing industries.

The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to regulate Internet service like a public utility, expanding the U.S. government’s oversight of a once lightly regulated business at the center of the country’s commercial and social activity. The 3-2 vote, along party lines, starts the clock ticking on an expected legal challenge from the telecom and cable industries.
The move marks a turn in the government’s approach to the Internet—from a hands off policy dating back two decades to encourage the Web’s growth to a more interventionist posture as commercial issues have multiplied.

A few months ago, display advertising on the Internet mysteriously vanished for more than an hour. On more than 55,000 websites such as BuzzFeed and Forbes, spaces that usually display advertisements went blank. It turned out that Google’s behemoth online advertising platform, DoubleClick, was to blame. The DoubleClick ad server had crashed, disrupting the entire infrastructure by which advertisers buy billions of dollars of ads across millions of websites.
Think about it: In an era of global competition, one company’s network crash broke the Internet.

Wow, they did it, they really did it! The F.C.C. revised its initial rule offering about net neutrality and fast lanes to change the Internet categorization from “information service” to “telecommunications” and brought the entire mobile phone market also into that umbrella. That process was a true demonstration of democracy in action as the shift responded to the over four million comments to the original proposal and a strongly worded intention by President Obama last November.
Here is what we all hope to see as a result of this new categorization: resources to build out broadband, improve disability services and create greater digital and information literacies

The Oakland, Calif., Police Department is piloting a new Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)-capable cloud storage platform for body-worn camera video that may help officers better manage the deluge of video they now capture and store.
“Many police departments have told us they have been unable to explore the benefits of the cloud due to concerns with CJIS security policies,” said Steve Lovell, former president of VIEVU, a Seattle-based maker of wearable police cameras. In response, VIEVU and Microsoft recently collaborated to make a CJIS-capable version of VIEVU’s VERIPATROL platform for the Microsoft Azure Government cloud.
“Because VIEVU is CJIS-capable, police departments will be able to use the cloud to view, modify and share video data with a convenient, on-demand solution that is capable of meeting regulatory requirements,” said Lovell.

The average public sector organization uses 721 cloud services. A recent study found that only one third of federal agencies met a June 2014 deadline to meet FedRAMP security guidelines -- but that report didn’t cover what cloud services employees are bringing to work with them, known as shadow IT.
Skyhigh Networks’ fourth quarter 2014 report looked at what cloud services are most prevalent in government organizations and the risks associated with such services.